“Let’s see if you like the dark,” Payne said as he turned off the lights.
The gunman replied with a blitzkrieg that tore through the tiny shop. Glass, wood, and plaster erupted into the air as the sightless sniper relied on blind luck and sheer volume to hit his targets. A second wave followed quickly, which shattered the front door and showered the room with a stream of razor-sharp confetti, but Payne remained calm, keeping his face covered and his body against the base of the thick front wall.
“I guess not,” he sneered.
When the violence subsided, Payne risked a quick peek into the back of the shop. Things were blurry at first because of the lack of light and a cloud of dust, but after a few seconds, he realized the counter that shielded Jones had taken more hits than a hippie at Woodstock.
“D.J.,” Payne whispered, “are you all right?”
“Yeah, and very lucky. I don’t know how that last batch missed me.”
“Me, either.” Payne glanced around the shop and realized they couldn’t stay there much longer. “We have to get out of here. If we stay put, he’s going to hit us eventually.”
Jones agreed. “He did us a favor by knocking out the door and window. If you want, I can fire a few clearing shots so you can bolt outside.”
Payne nodded. Even though Jones wouldn’t be aiming at the sniper, he would minimize the risk of return fire, which would allow him to slip outside. Of course, the drawback to the plan was the possibility of more than one gunman. If someone was waiting near the door, he’d shoot Payne rather easily.
But it was a chance they had to take.
“Are you ready?” Payne asked as he peered through the darkness. “On the count of three, shoot through the window as I head for the door.”
“You got it.”
“One,” Payne whispered as he adjusted the Glock in his sweaty right hand.
“Two,” muttered Jones as he peered at his glassless target.
“Three!” they yelled in unison.
With a burst of adrenaline, Payne leapt from the ground and sprinted out the door while Jones aimed his gun at the window and fired. Or at least tried to. Unfortunately, nothing came out when he squeezed the Glock’s trigger, which left his friend in a very precarious position.
The concrete under Payne’s feet exploded in wispy puffs of smoke as the gunman opened fire from the roof across the street. With nowhere else to go, Payne cut sharply to his right and dove behind the closest car he saw, a maneuver that tore most of the skin from his knees. In Payne’s mind, it was a fair trade. He definitely preferred scabs to bullet holes.
“Are you all right?” Jones called from inside.
“I’m fine!” Payne snarled. “Where the hell was my cover fire?”
“Sorry. I had a misfire. The damn gun wouldn’t shoot.”
“What do you mean it wouldn’t shoot? You have to pull the trigger, you know.”
Jones grinned, countering the insult with a fact that Payne had overlooked. “Don’t be mad at me, be mad at the source. Remember, you got your gun from the same place as me.”
Growling softly, Payne focused his attention on the weapon in his hand. If it had the same malfunction as Jones’s, he wouldn’t have a chance against the sniper. The truth was he had slim odds to begin with, but with a broken firearm, he would be in serious trouble.
“Shit,” he mumbled to himself. There was only one way to find out.
Payne pointed his Glock toward the building across the street and squeezed the trigger. But nothing happened. No explosion. No discharge. Just a quiet click.
In situations like this, Payne was taught to use a simple corrective technique known as “tap, rack, bang.” He tapped the bottom of the handle to make sure his magazine was properly engaged. Then he racked the gun, ejecting the misfired round and chambering the next one. Finally, he pulled the trigger again, hoping to hear a bang.
But in this case, the only sound he heard was another click.
“Well?” Jones called from inside the shop. He had tried the same technique without any luck.
“We’re so screwed we should be wearing condoms.”
Jones grinned. “Don’t give up hope yet. What kind of shot is this guy? Any good?”
Payne glanced at the holes in the sidewalk and sighed at the damage that had been done. “Not really. If he was, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”
“And he’s probably working alone, huh?”
“If he wasn’t, his partner would’ve nailed me by now.”
“If that’s the case, then what are we afraid of? Are we going to let some redneck knock off two of this country’s best soldiers, or are we going to come up with a plan to take this guy out?”
“If I was a betting man, I’d put my money on the redneck.”
“I’m serious! We’ve been in several situations worse than this, and we’ve always made it out.”
Payne grunted as he stared at his broken Glock. “Fine, let’s list everything that we have, and maybe a plan will become obvious.”
Jones nodded. “As far as I can tell, we have two defective handguns and . . .”
“And?” Payne muttered, hoping that he was forgetting something important.
“And that’s about it! As far as I can tell, we have two broken Glocks.”
Payne leaned his head against the Chevy Celebrity that protected him and groaned. Their current inventory wouldn’t stop a mugger, let alone a well-placed sniper. “Is there anything else in there that can be used? A gun behind the counter? A telephone? A flashlight?”
“Oh, shit!” Jones suddenly shrieked. “I just thought of something big!”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“Levon!”
The answer stunned Payne. Somehow he had completely forgotten about Greene. “Holy hell! Why don’t you see where that badass is hiding?”
“Be back in a flash.”
Payne snuggled up against the car the best he could, trying to conceal his body under the maroon frame. He realized if the sniper attempted a ground assault, the only way he could protect himself was by hiding under the car. Thankfully, before that was necessary, Payne detected a sound in the far-off distance. At first he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not, but after a few seconds of listening, he knew that he wasn’t. It was the wail of sirens, and they were headed his way.
“Jon?” Jones shouted from the back of the shop. “Is that what I think it is?”
Payne peered underneath the Chevy and saw several squad cars pulling onto his street. “Yes, Mr. Jones, the cavalry has arrived!”
“Thank God.”
“You said it.” Payne leaned back on the sidewalk, his legs still underneath the car for protection. “By the way, how’s Levon doing?”
Instead of shouting his response, Jones scrambled out of the store and took a seat next to his friend. Once he was safely behind the car, he turned toward Payne and looked him dead in the eye. “You’re not going to believe this. You’re really not.”
“What now?”
“I don’t even know how to start, but . . .” Jones struggled for the right words to break the news to his friend. “Levon is gone.”
Payne sat upright, the color draining from his face. “Oh, my God! How did he-”
“No,” Jones said as he grabbed Payne’s arm. “He’s not
dead
gone. He’s
gone
gone. I don’t know how he did it, but that slippery son of a bitch managed to escape.”
CHAPTER 22
AS
the police pulled to a screeching stop in front of Sam’s Tattoos, Payne stared at Jones, trying to determine if his best friend was serious. After several seconds, Payne decided that he was. “Levon has disappeared?”
“Yep. He’s gone.”
Payne shook his head in disbelief. “How is that possible? He’s, like, eight feet tall and weighs five hundred pounds, yet you managed to lose him in an empty room.”
“That’s
what I said.”
“I thought you were supposed to be a professional detective.”
“I am. And in my professional opinion, I’m telling you he’s not in there.”
Payne leaned closer to Jones and tried to smell his breath. “Have you been drinking?”
Jones grinned. “I wish I was.”
Payne was about to reply, but before he had a chance, a booming voice shattered the stillness of the night.
“We see you behind the car,” announced a patrolman through his bullhorn. “Put your hands where we can see them and come out very slowly.”
The two of them did as they were told and were frisked by a team of gun-toting officers.
“Gentlemen,” barked Sergeant Rutherford, the lead officer at the scene, “I’m sure you realize y’all have a lot of explaining to do.”
Rutherford was in his mid-forties and possessed the face of an ex-boxer. His nose was crooked, his teeth were fake, and his face was dotted with several scars. His thick black hair was splashed with gray, but his police hat covered most of it.
“Before I throw you guys in cuffs and haul your asses to the station, you need to tell me what happened here.”
Payne cleared his throat and began to speak before Jones had a chance to say anything. “My buddy and I just flew in to New Orleans earlier tonight for a little R amp; R. We rented a car, got something to eat, and decided to do something out of the ordinary. A local told us that Jamaican Sam drew the best tattoos in the whole darn state-”
“A lovely state, I might add.”
“It sure is, D.J. Anyway, we decided to come here to check out his craftsmanship.”
“We were impressed. Very colorful stuff.”
“But we were here for less than ten minutes when somebody shot Sam from across the street.”
“We think from that rooftop there,” Jones said, pointing. “With a sniper rifle.”
“We wanted to fight back.”
“But we didn’t have any weapons.”
Payne nodded. “I hid in the corner for protection, and D.J. dove behind the counter.”
“When I was back there, I found two guns. I tossed one to Jon and kept the other for myself.”
“We tried to use them when the madman started shooting at us.”
“But neither of them worked.”
“I left mine on the sidewalk,” Payne volunteered.
“And mine is inside.”
“You can check for yourself. Neither of them is capable of firing a round.”
“Yep,” Jones seconded. “I squeezed the trigger, but it wouldn’t make a bang or nothing.”
Payne paused in thought. “Anything else you can think of?”
Jones shook his head. “Nope. I think that covers it.”
Payne nodded in agreement. “That’s about all we’ve got, sir. Hopefully that makes your report pretty easy to write.”
Rutherford studied the two men and smiled. He wanted to comment on the conversation but was simply too fascinated to speak. Even though Payne’s and Jones’s statements were coming from two different voices, it was like they were coming from the same mind. When Payne started a sentence, Jones finished it. If Jones started, Payne ended it. Rutherford had been on the job for over twenty years and had never seen anything like it.
“Okay,” the cop muttered as he emerged from his trance. “We’ll take a look around and see if your story checks out. If it does, y’all have nothing to worry about. I’ll have you back on your vacation by sunrise. However, if it doesn’t, then you might be staying here in our state”-Rutherford turned his head toward Jones and smirked-“pardon me, our
lovely
state, for a lot longer than you were planning. In the meantime, why don’t you guys show me some ID? That’ll give me a chance to see if y’all have escaped from a mental health facility, which is a distinct possibility in my book.”
AFTER
examining the scene for an hour, Rutherford decided that Payne and Jones were telling the truth. But before he let them go, he decided to discuss the facts with his second in command. “Richie, can you think of any reason to hold these two any longer?”
The second cop, white and overweight, glanced at his notes and shook his head. “Nah. From what we’ve found, these guys couldn’t have been the shooter. The bullet that killed Sam matched the size of the casings from the roof across the street. The two Glocks found at the scene have no serial numbers, probably bought by Sam for protection. And just like the guys said, the damn things appeared to be unfired. We couldn’t smell discharge.”
“On top of that,” Rutherford added, “the two suspects are covered in cuts and scratches, which were probably caused by flying glass. That means they were in the shop when the shooting started.”
“Yep, and the initial 911 call mentioned a sniper as well.”
“What about their histories? Any warrants?”
“We checked their backgrounds, and neither of them have any prior convictions. Both of them have military academy educations, and both are currently employed by a reputable company, Payne Industries. In fact, the white guy in your car is CEO of the corporation.”
“You mean it’s
his
corporation?” Rutherford asked.
“Yes, sir. He’s the head honcho. Flew down here on his private jet.”
“I’ll be damned. What the hell is a rich corporate type doing in a New Orleans ghetto in the middle of the damn night?”
“Apparently getting a tattoo.”
Rutherford laughed at the suggestion. “Kind of unlikely, huh?”
“Yeah, but I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think he flew all the way down here to kill Jamaican Sam, either. A rich man like that doesn’t commit his own crimes. A millionaire pays to have them done for him.”
Rutherford nodded. “True, but we’ve already decided that Payne and Jones didn’t kill anyone, right? So what brings them here at this hour?”
“Drugs?”
“I doubt it. I ordered a background check on Jamaican Sam Fletcher, and he had no record other than a few busts for marijuana. The guy was a smoker, not a seller. The cops that patrol this neighborhood claim he ran a clean place. In fact, his artwork was so admired by the local gangs that thugs went out of their way to protect him.”
“Where does that leave us?”
Rutherford didn’t want to admit it, but he had no choice. “Honestly, it leaves us without a case. We can’t charge these two without just cause, and we can’t prove that these guys did anything wrong. We could hold them for twenty-four hours of questioning if we wanted to, but I guarantee that Payne would have a fancy-pants lawyer down here in the blink of an eye causing a big stink about something. No, thank you! It just wouldn’t be worth it.”
“Then we’re kinda forced to let them go, huh?”
“It looks that way, but that doesn’t mean we’re gonna forget ’em.”
The cop looked at his superior and grinned. “What do you have in mind? Some kind of tail?”
Rutherford laughed at the suggestion. “Nothing that drastic, at least not yet. I’m gonna do some digging when I get back to the station and see if I can turn up anything that makes sense. If I do, I’ll nail these guys before they know what hit ’em.” Rutherford groaned as he stared at the captives in the back of his squad car. “Let ’em loose, but tell ’em I want to have a brief chat with them before they leave.”
While waiting for the duo, Rutherford leaned against a nearby building, ready to verbally pounce on the men at the first opportunity. Payne and Jones barely had time to stretch their legs before the veteran cop started his lecture.
“Gentlemen,” he said sternly, “y’all should know better than to be roaming this type of neighborhood in the middle of the night. Violence is pretty common here, and the idiot that told you to visit Sam’s shop at night should’ve known better. Y’all are lucky to be alive.”
Payne nodded his head in agreement as he walked toward the sergeant. “Tha
nks to you, we are. If you guys didn’t show up when you did, we would’ve been killed by the sniper for sure.”
“Don’t thank me,” admitted the cop. “Thank the person who called 911. He was the one that made us aware of the shooting.”
“Actually, I’d like to. Is the guy around?”
Rutherford shrugged while staring at the crowd that had gathered across the street. “Probably, but I don’t know where to find him. He used a pay phone to report the incident, but refused to leave his name.”
Jones smiled to himself, wondering if Levon Greene was the person who’d made the call. If he had, they probably owed the Buffalo Soldier their lives. “If you manage to find out who it was, thank him for us, okay?”
Rutherford shook Jones’s hand and smiled. “You got it.” Then he turned to shake Payne’s. “In the meantime, stay out of trouble, all right? Keep in mind if I hear your names mentioned at the station in connection with any other suspicious events during your vacation in New Orleans, I might be forced to reconsider your involvement. Do I make myself clear?”
Both men nodded even though they realized that their trouble was far from over.
In fact, it was just beginning.
CHAPTER 23
LIGHTNING
bolts. The pain felt like lightning bolts surging through her brain.
Ariane did her best to ignore it-tried to open her eyes, tried to fight through the jackhammer that thumped inside her skull-but the agony was overwhelming. God, she wondered, what’s wrong with me? She’d never felt this bad before. Ever. She’d suffered through hangovers, migraines, and a skiing accident that left her with a severe concussion, but in all her years, she had never come close to feeling like this.
Hell, it felt like she was giving birth through her nose. The pain was
that
intense.
To escape the pounding, Ariane was tempted to fall back asleep. She figured if she got a little more rest she’d have to feel a whole lot better than she did now. Then, if all went well, she’d roll out of bed like she had planned and whip Jonathon’s butt in a round of golf.
Golf? Wait a second. Something about that didn’t seem right. She tried to figure it out, struggled to put her snippets of memory together in an orderly fashion, but was unable to. She could vaguely remember waking up and brushing her teeth and getting a shower and . . . the door. Something about the door. She could remember someone pounding on her door.
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